REVIEW OF SIR JOHN COXE HIPPISLEY'S SPEECH. Thus it is that the worthy (we had almost said the poor) Baronet has been reduced from being, as he fondly hoped he should prove, the triumphant advocate of the See of Rome, to become a mere and tame apologist for his own conduct. For this, in truth, is the whole drift and substance, at least the main drift and substance of these two pamphlets. Of that which is properly called the speech, in each of them it occupies a considerable part, and a great proportion of the documents also relate solely to this point;they consist either of what Sir John has written at other times, in order to shew his consistency: or what was written to him, as proofs that he was formerly well thought of, and his conduct approved by those who now condemn him. He goes farther indeed; for he not only defends himself, but in the latter Speech (p. 43.) even goes, as we cannot but think, a little out of his way to defend the Chancellors of the two Universities. Whether those two illustrious personages will be more thankful to the worthy Baronet for his interference than some of his other friends have turned out to be, we cannot conjecture; but we should rather think that they would have been as well pleased if they had been let alone. This shews, however, the worthy Baronet's good nature, and his great readi. ness to serve his friends on all occasions: and besides, it gives him an opportunity of letting the public know, that he has been for many years " honoured with the friendship" of the Duke of Gloucester, and " is often in his society:" which must be a great comfort and support to the worthy Baronet when suffering under these unmerited attacks. We wish, however, that in doing this, he had been content to meddle only with his friends, or those whom he reckons among his friends: instead of which, he has made an odd sort of transition from the Chancellors of the Universities to the Universities themselves: and he has, in the way of lamenta. tion, expressed an opinion that they had shewn a greater degree of activity than becomes such grave bodies. Under which judgment, coming from so respectable a quarter, we have no doubt that all the heads of Houses, the Doctors, the Proctors, and the Masters of Oxford and Cambridge, must have felt very uncomfortable; and, what is worse, we rather suspect that it was the contemplation of so bright an example, which stirred up a Noble Earl to bring precisely the same sort of accusation against the University of Cambridge, upon the recent presentation of another petition on the same subject: which would make Sir John Coxe Hippisley answerable for more sins than his own. : Upon the whole, therefore, though we do certainly pity the worthy Baronet, yet we cannot say that we carry our commiseration very far, when we consider the many sources of consolation which he has thus opened for himself: besides which, we cannot forget, that, after all, the whole is of his own seeking. Had he remained quiet in the homely Protestant principles in which he was educated, nothing of this would have happened to him. Had he not rather unaccountably fallen in love with the Pope, he might now safely have laughed at Dr. Milner. We shall now proceed shortly to make good our assertion, that, in fact, these two publications are decidedly hostile to the Roman Catholic claims in the way that those claims are now made: and that so far from being friendly to unqualified concession, such as is now demanded, they declare it to be perfectly inadmissible. The first Speech sets out with lamenting the failure of the proposed measure of the Veto, and adduces from a letter of Dr. Milner's the most pointed arguments for the expediency as well as the reasonableness of it. Among other arguments, after stating what has taken place in other states, that learned Prelate goes on. -" The head of the Church has allowed a direct interference and power in the appointment of Bishops throughout the greater part of the Christian Continent to a man who has apostatized to Mahometanism; and shall it be deemed unlawful for our Monarch to interfere in this business, just so far as it is necessary to ascer tain the loyalty of men who are to possess such great influence over his subjects? The schismatical Sovereign of Russia, and the heretical King of Prussia, have always been consulted in the choice of [Roman] Catholic Prelates, for the vacancies within their respective dominions: what then hinders the Sovereign of the United Kingdom from enjoying the same privilege? He actually possesses it now in his American dominions: is that unlawful in Ireland, which is lawful in Canada?"* The reader, who may have seen the Elucidation of the Veto," may wonder at this, and even doubt whether this can have come from the pen of Dr. Milner, but we believe we can answer for the correctness of Sir J. Coxe Hippisley in this case; indeed, whose reasoning soever it is, it must be allowed to be very just. And, accordingly, Sir John going over the same ground, only much more at large, and referring particularly to the guards which were interposed in France against the Papal encroachments, goes on: "On these principles the Concordat between Buonaparte and Pius VII. was regulated: and on similar principles a controlling authority has been exercised, at some period or another, in almost every ev state in Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant, with respect to the introduction of rescripts from the See of Rome. "Sir J. Hippisley observed, that his Right Hon. friend had, with great force, pressed upon the attention of the house, his considerations of the subject, as applying to foreign interference. The Catholic Prelates contend that they have given the highest security that subjects can give, by taking the oath of allegiance. It is admitted, that none higher can be given by an individual: but, from the authorities which have been cited, it appears, that almost every State has seen reasons for adopting collateral measures of precaution. It is not the Catholic subject against whon the State seeks to legislate, but against the encroachment of a foreign power, not slow in devising the means, nor inactive (as history will shew, at various periods) in carrying them into effect." p. 33. This strong admission of Sir John Coxe Hippisley's against his old friend the Pope, will be very fully illustrated by the following passage from one of his notes to the second Speech (p.81.); where, after making a long quotation from Blackstone on the subject of the statutes of Premunire, he thus goes on; and the reader is requested particularly to attend to the proofs which he adduces of the absolute empire which the Pope exercises over the Bishops (and of course over every individual) of his communion in the United Kingdom: "The preceding extract is confined to the object of the statute of Pramunire, anterior to the Reformation, as a necessary guard, instituted by a Catholic State, against the usurpations of the Roman Pontiffs, and principally for the protection of presentations and collations to Bishoprics and Ecclesiastical Benefices. It may be said that there is little chance of such an abuse in modern times: in that case then the statute is merely a dead letter. The Catholic Prelacy transmit their postulations" (that is, we presume, the instruments of nomination) " to Rome in favour of particular subjects of his Majesty, but has Rome never deviated from them? has she never collated, even during the reign of his present Majesty, any person in whose favour no postulation bad been made, or, if made, was uuknown to have been made? And has not Rome also turned aside the postulations of Bishops and Apostolic Vicars, and, for many years together, refused to act upon them? and, in other instances, rejected the person who was the chief object of postulation? To each of these questions an answer must be given in the affirmative: and yet it is not contended that, in either instance, it was in the contemplation of Rome to have acted with hostility to the interests of the State, but, on the contrary, in some instances alluded to, the conduct of Rome was influenced by a manifest desire to act with a marked deference to those interests. Until the death of the fa ther of the late Cardinal of York, bowever, we know that the See of Rome, almost invariably, acted upon the recommendation of the Representative of the House of Stuart. "Should a Papal Bull be directed to an alien or to a subject of questionable loyalty, collating such a person to a Roman Catholic See within the realm, will the Catholic Prelacy contend that, suo jure, they could reject the operation of such a bull? -They must answer in the negative. And herein municipal regulation would be required in aid of the subject. "So recently as the year 1794 an alien Bishop was sent to Ireland, and the Roman Catholic Metropolitan, within whose province he intruded himself, expressed his disapprobation in these words: "I was surprized to hear of an ALIEN BISHOP coming into my province, which was a treatment which I did not expect from the sacred congregation, who gave me no notice thereof. If Cardinal ANTONELLI had remained in his station, I would have taken the liberty of letting him know my mind very candidly." After subjoining a strong opinion of another Prelate whom he does not name, he subjoins " If such be the opinions of eminent Ecclesiastics of the See of Rome, jealous of the independence of their Church, shall the members of the Establishment wholly shut their eyes against the possibility of encroachment? And shall they who seek the protection of their Catholic fellowsubjects equally with their own, be calumniated, because they are not disposed to surrender their reason to the voice of clamour? If the representative body of the nation, the guardians of its interests and security, should be so little alive to their duties as to turn aside from wholesome legislation, in yielding to such clamours, very little permanent good could be augured from concessions exacted by such ill-grounded apprehensions."" We do not know if we perfectly understand the worthy Baronet's meas. ing in those words of his "wholesome legislation"; whether, like Mr. Sydney Smith, he would cram the Veto, or some other such measure, down the throats of his Constituents; but what is abundantly plain, is, that Sir J. C. Hippisley is most decidedly and pointedly of opinion (and it is impossible to speak it more clearly) that the legislature should not "yield to clamour," that it should not "shut its eyes against the possibility of en croachments:" in which his sentiments most perfectly accord with ours.. We are perhaps disposed to go farther than he would choose to do; but our persuasion is, that the best way to secure "the independence of the Church;" is to put a stop to any expectations of farther concession; to let the Roman Catholics understand at once and definitively, that as it is now abundantly plain that no sufficient security can be found, or will be found, on their parts, it must be and ever will be unsafe to entrust them with any degree of political power: that the only question at all fit to be entertained, is, whether that share of it which has been extended to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, in the elective franchise, should not be resumed. At any rate, we do aver, that if Sir John C. Hippisley is at all mindful of what he has here argued upon, if he will act upon his own principles, he must resist any application to Parliament for any fur. ther extension of privileges to those who say, that they will continue to keep their ecclesiastical concerns perfectly independent of, and uncontrollable by our Government. Further to shew this, we shall go on to driect yet more particularly the attention of our readers to what is the real and great danger-a danger which would still exist if there were no Pope; supposing it possible, which we doubt, that the Romish religion could exist without a Pope; for there would still be the same motive in the Clergy of that communion, nay, in every serious layman, to undermine and overthrow every other Church but their own; since, in their Church only, according to their creed, can salvation be obtained. Nor must we ever lose sight of that most important circumstance, the celibacy of their Clergy, enforced and finally established by the most ambitious Pontiff that ever filled the chair: undoubtedly for the mere purpose of promoting his ambitious views. By thus cutting them off from the greatest of all the social comforts, he wished to fix, and did, in a great measure, fix and concentrate, as it were, every passion of their heart upon the attainment of power, and the aggrandizement of that Church, by the help of which alone they could rise to eminence, Bearing this in mind, let us hear what Sir John himself assigns as the cause which occasions the necessity of the Sovereign having a control over the elections or nominations of at least the superior Clergy. Some persons would have it that the "nomination or negative was exercised by Sovereigns, merely because a civil establishment, or temporal brief, was annexed to the Prelacies in nomination." But this he shews to be quite unfounded. He says (Specch 2d, Append. p. 56.): "The real motive for the exercise of such a prerogative, is found in the extensive influence which the Prelacy of the Roman Catholic Church must necessarily have upon the minds of those of their communion. In every instance, therefore, where those prelacies are recognized at all, by the State, the confirmation of the State, in respect to the individuals exercising the Episcopal functions, though merely in spirituals, ought to be concurrent with their appointment." The truth is, that it is not only influence, but absolute dominion, which those Prelates arrogate to themselves: and for this we need only refer to |